It is estimated that there are more than 60 million outdoor lights in the United States autonomously controlled by conventional photo-controls. These outdoor lights, when properly working, simply react to ambient light conditions, for example, to turn-on at dusk and turn-off at dawn. This method of operating outdoor lights results in many lights being on when they are not needed, and it significantly increases outdoor lighting system operating costs.
The use of conventional photo-controls to control outdoor lights (luminaires) also leads to maintenance and repair issues. There are significant costs associated with hiring qualified maintenance personnel and buying equipment such as, for example, special maintenance vehicles required to access light fixtures for replacing lamps and servicing electrical components. To discover faulty fixture operations, light system owners and operators must resort to sending maintenance personnel to do “drive-by” visual examination of all units, which often number in the thousands or wait for a customer to report a malfunction. This drive-by must be done at night to detect non-functioning fixtures. These high costs limit how many lights can be repaired or serviced on any given day and force many light system operators to maintain their outdoor lights on an as needed basis (i.e., only when they are notified of an inoperable light). Understandably, this maintenance methodology is highly inefficient because it ties up resources as crews and equipment randomly travel to failed, geographically dispersed outdoor lights.
Lighting system operators (e.g., electric utilities) have tried to limit the time, equipment, and personnel spent on any given outdoor light by conducting group maintenance programs, where lights within a given geographical area are maintained on a scheduled basis. This approach reduces travel time between lights. In order to implement this maintenance methodology, light system operators must estimate lighting equipment life expectancy and schedule maintenance in each geographical area when lighting outages in the area are expected to reach a predetermined level. While this methodology has certain benefits, maintenance crews often replace good equipment that has significant additional life remaining Consequently, this maintenance methodology results in maintenance crews throwing away good equipment and visiting outdoor lights that do not require maintenance. Locating light fixtures with failed lamps is a problem since roadway fixtures are only on at night and most maintenance crews work during the day.
What is needed is a new light management system that overcomes the deficiencies noted above.